


From Here No Lines Are Drawn

by J_Baillier



Series: Never Easy And Never Over [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Advanced course in angry pining angst, Angry John, Angry Sherlock, Angst, Break Up, Confused John, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Drama, Drugs, From here lies pain and you have all been warned, Hurt Sherlock, Implied Johnlock, Jealous Sherlock, John Loves Sherlock, Johnlock Angst, Love, M/M, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pain, Pining, Pining Sherlock, Sad John, Sad Sherlock, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sherlock Loves John, Sherlock is a Mess, Tragedy, but it's complicated, hurt without much comfort, polyamory by some definitions, post-HLV, sherlock and drugs, there are no easy solutions here, three people in a very complicated relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-04-30 01:41:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5145614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Baillier/pseuds/J_Baillier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is exhausted by family life and Sherlock is feeling neglected. An abysmal spur-of-the-moment decision leads to a brutal confrontation which might just be the endgame of a relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Delete

**Author's Note:**

> After completing "Screaming In Cathedrals" I return to AO3 with something rather different from my usual style. You have been warned. From here lies pain and destruction. 
> 
> The title of the story comes from a Tori Amos song.
> 
> Timeline: Post-HLV. The baby has been born. Nothing has been heard from Moriarty and he doesn't appear in this storyline.
> 
> \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A text message arrives from John. SORRY CAN'T MAKE IT TODAY, I'M SURE YOU'LL DO FINE WITHOUT ME.

These kinds of messages have been a reoccurring thing lately in Sherlock's life.

He checks the crime scene address Lestrade has given him. He pulls on his coat, arranges his scarf and hurries downstairs with the plan of hauling a cab.

When he gets to the street, realization hits. 

He's not in the mood for any of it. 

He doesn't want to go. Hasn't really wanted to go for weeks, now. 

Every time he's had to attend to Lestrade's summons without John it's been harder and harder to enjoy the game, harder and harder to filter out the disdain directed at him from everyone else but the good DI.

It's frighteningly easy, to decide not to go. Not to hail that cab. Not to find out what sort of a dismal attempt at homicide the pathetic criminal elements of London have cooked up this time.

It never ends. There's always the next one and the next one and without John it's just work and no fun. 

Sherlock walks to the tube station and travels to Battersea.

Lestrade texts him, even tries to call. Sherlock ignores all this and buries the phone deep in his pocket.

He finds what he's looking for on a quiet side road off Clove Hitch Quay. The substance that the dealer currently stocks is not ideal but it's pure enough. Sherlock ends up paying overprice but who cares, really.

 

 

 

He walks for an hour and a half, that's how long the high lasts. It's longer than it used to be now that he hasn't used for awhile. 

He walks until his neurotransmitters are all tapped out, leaving him with a bland, deprived feeling and a yearning for more. It feels like something clawing inside his skin to get out.

Sherlock suddenly realizes he's ended up in Chiswick. He has no idea where the nearest tube station is and somehow can't be bothered to look it up on his phone. 

He knows this street. He knows it because it's John and Mary's street.

'You're always welcome', John keeps telling him. 'Anytime', Mary keeps repeating. These kinds of niceties make Sherlock want to vomit. He wants some odd kind of a revenge, wants to pretend he doesn't understand that they're just empty social constructs to create an amicable atmosphere. The true purpose of these platitudes is to keep people at a distance - cliches instead of honesty. 'This is our life and this is yours and there's a line drawn between'.

It's late afternoon and the light is already dwindling. The wind is chilly and dry leaves dance around the pavement. Sherlock pulls up his coat collar before he strides up to the right door and rings the doorbell. 

Why is he doing this again? Somehow he doesn't want to analyze his reasons. Sherlock rarely enjoys directing his deductive powers towards his own psyche. 

John opens the door slowly with the baby in his arms. Sherlock deduces that he'd probably been expecting a Jehovah's witness. They tend to target these sorts of high unemployment-rate, lower middle class suburbs. 

John's smile is surprised but wide when he recognizes Sherlock. "Oh hi," John says. "Nice surprise. Come on in."

Sherlock straightens his spine and strides in. He's feeling slightly dizzy from the cocaine.

 

 

"The washer's broken down and Mary's gone to find us a new one. Can't wait until tomorrow with the amount of laundry this little guy is producing," John says and lays baby Benjamin down onto a colourful quilt on the livingroom floor. "She wouldn't trust that sort of shopping to me so I got baby duty," John nods towards the living room where the sound of said baby cooing can be heard from. 

Sherlock carefully negotiates over the obstacle course of toys on the foyer floor. John is already in the kitchen so that's where Sherlock wanders to.

Sherlock quietly observes John while his former flatmate makes tea. He can read the sleepless nights in John's frown lines, deduces an argument has happened with Mary from the fact that John has his phone in his trouser pocket and keeps glancing at it, senses his anxiety in the tension in his shoulders. Rarely has he seen John this exhausted.

"That was quick, you know, must be a record," John suggests.

Sherlock frowns. "What do you mean?"

"The case?" John reminds him, the corner of his mouth curving up in amusement, "Or was it so easy you deleted it already?"

"I didn't go. It was barely a two," Sherlock lies. Mary once told him she could tell when he fibbed but John couldn't.

"Okay." John leans on the doorframe to check on the baby before banging around the cabinets for teabags. 

Sherlock is taken aback by how tired John looks. He had often had bags under his eyes in the past, but now even his frown lines are deeper. An argument with Mary or just normal baby worries? This is not Sherlock's area.

It's strange, this assumption of beverages when visitors arrive, Sherlock thinks to himself while watching John wash a couple of tea mugs. Another arbitrary, pointless rule.

After receiving his portion of bland tea from John, Sherlock idles to the living room, letting his gaze wander on the knicknacks placed on the shelves of the chipboard book cabinet.

There's one of the wedding photos, with most of the wedding party in the frame. Sherlock had been standing next to John when that one was taken, his hat held in his hand but the edge of the frame covers half of his face. Which one of them has chosen and framed this exact photo, Mary or John and why? Why not choose one with just the two of them? Or why not frame this one so that people wouldn't have been cut out?

Next to the wedding photo there's an old, chipped frame with an old photograph of a couple. The husband has John's eyes. Parents, most likely. One can always deduce the level of spite from the amount of dust gathered on such photos. In John's case it must be substantial but not critical.

Mary's matriculation photo. She had braces then. 

John during his army days, in a group shot. Standing next to James Sholto, his commanding officer. Due to the large amount of people the photographer had to fit into the shot it's hard to make out the expressions of those present.

John walks into the livingroom, carrying his own portion of low-quality bagged tea seeped too long because he was emptying the dishwasher while making the tea.

The baby lets out a wail. John curses under his breath and picks him up. 

The drained feeling of post-score blues is abating. Sherlock is capable of being curious again.

Sherlock turns to face John, eyes narrowing. "He's been like that all day?" he deduces.

John sighs. "Maybe it's colic, maybe not. Mary's so much better with him."

Feelings of inadequacy mixed with worry over the baby's health, then. John needs a distraction of some sorts. A reminder of good memories, perhaps?

"You never told me much about James Sholto," Sherlock remarks.

"Mm?" John cradles the baby and after a bit of fussing Benjamin Watson calms down. "Not much to tell, really."

Sherlock takes a seat on the worn armchair in front of the bay windows. "You told Mary, didn't you?"

John stops moving around and looks at him, suspicious. "Told Mary what?"

Sherlock raises his brows. "That you were involved?"

John doesn't say anything. Maybe John needs more information to go on. "Mary told me we weren't the first, me and her. Clearly she was referring to him."

John's expression shifts from weary to icy. His entire being seems to be telling Sherlock this is no good, it's no fucking good at all and what is this Sumerian demon that's putting stuff like this in Sherlocks head, really. "He was a good friend. A very good friend," John says slowly.

Sherlock puts his mug on the coffee table. There's a cow painted on it. John is not a man who would buy mugs with cows. It's sordid, really, this attempt at a display of cosy English domestication. An assassin and a soldier playing house.

"There are three of us on that list. One of them is your wife. What does it make me and Sholto, then? Tell me, John, was it just a grope behind the mess tent or were you actually in love? Did you bail out on him, too, abandon him when things got tough or when you felt like running back to something more normal and nice and proper?"

Sherlock feels like he's somewhere high above, listening to himself say these things. Usually he has a lot more control. Usually he cares about the fact that you don't corner John Watson like this. You just don't.

Maybe it's the cocaine. Or the loneliness. Or the unfairness of it all.

Maybe there is indeed a Sumerian demon that has swallowed him whole.

John is staring at him, shaking with rage.

Suddenly, Sherlock loves this. It's like watching the world burn. The careful constructs of his life crackling to ashes. It's glorious, really. He wishes he was still high. This would have felt even better.

"Who the fuck do you think you are." It's not a question, really, what John says. 

Sherlock has seen him wear this expression just once before, in that overpriced French restaurant, donning a moustache that was so wrong for the shape of his mouth. Back then, however, there was at least a hint of relief and sadness in John's demeanour. 

Not this time.

"Tell me, John, why you never even bothered to tell me it was never about the labels. That it was always about me. That you would want this more than you wanted us."

John lets out a ragged breath and looks into his eyes. If Sherlock was anyone else, he would cower before such a display of quiet fury. He doesn't, because he's not afraid. Not anymore. It's not like things can get any worse. He just hasn't been able to admit that to himself before.

Let it at least be known that John gets everything he wants. Sherlock gets nothing. Let it be said out loud.

"You don't get to do this. Not now, " John spits out, "Not ever."

"It wasn't me who did this," Sherlock points out, spreading his arms as though presenting to John his own livingroom. "It was all you."

"There were two options. Two options for survival. You ruined them both."

Sherlock opens his mouth but then hesitates. This is new and confusing.

"You die. I sort of try to follow. I somehow scrape my life together again. Meet Mary. Have a kid. Have a life," John lists. 

"And the other option?" Sherlock asks.

John leans on the backrest of the sofa. The baby is looking at him with slight alarm. 

"Or you let me in on the grand plan against Moriarty. I wait for you. Worry for you but wait for you."

"And there would never have been a Mary?" Sherlock asks carefully.

"Well it doesn't fucking matter now!" John bellows, fingers curling into fists against the sofa. 

"Well it matters to me!" Sherlock stands up. "It would've been easier if it had been just your heterosexual sensitivities or the fact that you genuinely didn't see me that way but this," he draws in a breath, "Is a travesty."

"You don't get to do this. You don't get to stand in my house and call my life a travesty. You don't realize that this is what you do to people, do you? You poke and poke and poke until something bleeds? You wreck everything you touch and you don't give a fuck if someone gets hurt? Christ, you're a piece of work, you."

John is now shaking even worse and he looks like he wants to throttle Sherlock. Or at least break something else. It's getting a little frightening.

John's phone pings. Twice. He digs it out, reads the two messages and then tosses his phone at Sherlock who catches in and reads the messages as well.

One's from Lestrade. IS SHERLOCK WITH YOU? ARE YOU COMING? GET HIM TO CALL ME WILL YOU. GL

The other is from Mycroft. SURVEILLANCE SHOWS SHERLOCK AT HIS OLD HAUNT IN BATTERSEA CONVERSING WITH A KNOWN DEALER. SHOULD I BE ALARMED? MH

John takes a step closer while Sherlock reads the messages. 

John then draws in a breath and lets out a string of colourful curses.

As far as Sherlock knows this sort of language is frowned upon in the presence of babies.

"You see?" John asks him, pointing at his phone still in Sherlock's hand, "This is the sort of bullshit my life becomes around you? I thought that if you just behaved we could try and make this work, make all of it work, things could go back to being like they used to if we just put some thought into it."

"Nothing is the same. And never will be," Sherlock says. "I'm sick of it. All of it. You're here but not here. I'm this other life you have, which you can happily forget all about once you get home. I'm still there when you go home, John. I don't have anywhere to go."

John is staring at him. The baby whimpers and starts wailing. John ignores the noise.

"Sure you have. There's always some shithole you can crawl into after scoring. Because that's what you do, don't you? You didn't think I'd fucking notice? Case boring so let's shoot up and then go to John because he doesn't have anything better to do than sort the life of a fully grown man with no life skills whatsoever!"

The baby is now in full hysteria. John is still staring daggers at Sherlock.

Sherlock looks at the baby. Its wailing is distressing and it's very unlike John to leave an infant in a state of such alarm. As far as Sherlock knows babies are not supposed to be subjected to this sort of a scenario. It's not wholesome.

"I came back for you," Sherlock tells John because it's the only thing that comes to mind that might redeem him somehow. 

"Did you ever think that I might've been angry at you for doing exactly that?" John looks down on the sofa where assorted household utensils have been discarded. The apartment is a mess.

"I don't need this, Sherlock. Not now. I can't take much more of it."

"You can't take much more of enjoying the easy choice?" Sherlock suggests with a sarcastic tone, "I run myself to the ground while you get to enjoy all this marital bliss."

"I didn't ask for any of it! I didn't ask for you to do these things! Married to your work and all that, you could've just stopped, disappeared, never come back. What sort of a person would let me do this , build a new life and then come back to fucking wreck it again?" 

"You would have waited for me?" Sherlock asks incredulously.

The baby is reaching out towards John with his tiny fingers but John is standing too far away to notice. "Well it doesn't bloody matter now, does it? You made sure of that."

Sherlock can't take it anymore. He gathers Benjamin in his arms and holds him against his chest. The baby is warm and smells of talcum powder, Clair De Lune, John and mashed carrots. The realization is frightening: this is John's son and Sherlock would gladly die for them both because what's important to John is important, period. More important than Sherlock.

"Either don't abandon me like that, or stay dead. Not stand in my living room drugged to your gills ruining my life."

John often insults him, but not like this. He means it now, he means to wound him, to finally let it all out. Maybe Sherlock shouldn't have tricked him with the bomb. Maybe if John had been allowed to vent all of these things earlier this, right now, wouldn't be happening. 

John then delivers his crowning note, his immortal quote, his icing on the cake.

"You fucking psychopath," John says.

Sherlock draws in a breath as the last vestiges of strenght leave his body. A tear meanders down his cheek.

The reckless abandon with which he started this is gone. 

This is it. 

This is how John Watson breaks his heart for good. 

Sherlock is a spectator at his own execution.

Another tear, and then there are more and Sherlock loses count. His arms, holding onto Benjamin Watson like a lifeline, are shaking slightly. Sherlock turns slightly away, hugging the baby closer to his chest. John is no good to the baby like this.

"Give me my son," John says with a threatening tone.

This is the last memory he'll have of John Watson. The thought drains all air from Sherlock's lungs.

"Give me my son you fucking junkie."

Sherlock can't bring himself to step closer to John. Instead he lays Benjamin down on the floor and brushes his finger along the infant's cheek. The baby stares at him wide-eyed, but doesn't make a noise.

Sherlock doesn't even know how he gets home. He doesn't remember leaving John and Mary's house. He doesn't remember getting in a cab. Doesn't remember walking the steps up to the apartment. Doesn't remember anything because he can't anymore. He needs to delete it all for both their sakes. 

Delete John Watson.


	2. Exit wounds

_I’m wasted, losing time_  
_I’m a foolish, fragile spine_  
_I want all that is not mine_  
_I want him but we’re not right_  
_\- Daughter_

 

 

Heroin keeps him company through the night. Cocaine gets him up from the drafty floor in the morning. 

John's voice is in his head, calling him pathetic. Fucking junkie. John always says these things because he wants Sherlock to do better. At least he used to.

This is how far doing better has gotten Sherlock. Four years wasted after being allowed a glimpse of a life that was so much more than just existing. A life with things in it worth wanting and worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

But it wasn't his decision to make, really. John made it for him. 

Of course John couldn't leave his family, his infant son. No reasonable human being would do such a thing or ask anyone else to do that. Not even Sherlock, who people didn't generally describe as a poster boy for decency.

But that wasn't the issue, was it?

If John would have said it out loud, Sherlock wouldn't have jumped off the roof. If John had wanted it, he would not have proposed to Mary Morstan or whoever she was or is. The wedding would have never happened. 

There were approximately 54 steps on the road to this moment where John could have stopped all of it from happening. 

If John had wanted him, things would have been so different. 

With slightly apprehensive steps Sherlock climbs the stairs to John's former bedroom in the early hours of the morning, shivering slightly in just his dressing gown. The room smells of dust, old books and grocery store generic brand deodorant. 

He smokes half a packet of cigarettes while lying on the bed, head dangling from the end. Then he gives himself an orgasm thinking about John Watson. It's less of an indulgent fantasy and more of an afterthought now. 

John's room has practically become a mausoleum. It needs to be emptied and turned into something more purposeful.

Sherlock descends the stairs, walks to his own bedroom and exchanges the dressing gown into a suit. He probably should have showered first. His skin is covered in the cold sweat of lowering plasma concentration of various illegal substances. He has a pounding headache and his mouth tastes like dead leaves.

John would remind him to eat breakfast at this point. Sherlock pointedly ignores the kitchen and returns to the sitting room.

He needs to organize this new life of his. His existence post-John Watson. Eliminate all the painful memories and force the pieces of his story to fit without them.

He needs to keep going. Bring forth a routine. Work, score, experiment. Work, score, experiment. If he stops this cycle, it will all hit him. It's like a black thundercloud hovering in the distance, the realization of what his life will be like without John. He'll have to outrun it.

It takes Sherlock half an hour to find his phone. For some reason's it's in the fridge. He has a vague memory of putting it there because it kept making noises. Messages?

He slumps down onto the sofa and stares at the phone. Four new messages. The ones from Mycroft and Lestrade he deletes without reading. 

There's one from Mary. WHAT'S GOING ON? JOHN WON'T TELL ME ANYTHING

John is upset, evidently and hasn't bothered to give Mary an explanation. Sherlock decides it's not his responsibility. He types up a reply.

FIX HIM. IT'S YOUR JOB NOW. SH

There are six messages from John. Sherlock deletes them after being proud of himself for resisting the temptation to read them.

He smokes the rest of the packet. John isn't here to tell him bad or good or please don't or enough or you really shouldn't.

It occurs to Sherlock that he can do anything he wants now. 

Another message from John beeps in. Sherlock pries out the sim card from his phone and gets his bunsen burner. He holds the card between his thumb and forefinger and heats it until it melts, the hot metal plastic scorching his fingers. Rage and cocaine coursing through his veins he can barely feel the skin blistering.

 

 

Mycroft collects him the moment he steps foot outside the apartment. They have their dull, expected verbal fencing match about the drugs. Sherlock makes it abundantly clear that this is a calculated choice, not a momentary lapse in judgement. 

Mycroft shakes his head and takes him to lunch. He tries to give brotherly advice. Sherlock inquires whether he'd be welcome to jam a fork into his big brother's eye socket.

It's strange, really - these are the sorts of thoughts he'd kept locked neatly into the closets of his mind palace because John would tell him they're a bit not good and very, very upsetting. Not saying them out loud doesn't make them disappear but at least shutting up made John happy.

John had made him so tame. 

Mycroft gifts him with a new smartphone. 

"You could have just given me a new sim card," Sherlock tells him.

Mycroft just raises a brow. A tiny thing like a sim card wouldn't be a grand enough gesture. 

John's phone number is programmed into the phone's memory. 

"Don't be stupid about this," Mycroft tells him, as if that wasn't exactly what Sherlock has been for several years now. It takes a special kind of stupid, really, to fall for this sort of melodrama. To fall for a man you can't have.

Mycroft was always right. Don't get involved. It will destroy you.

 

 

John texts him again a hour after lunch. Apparently Mycroft has passed him Sherlock's new number. 

Sherlock throws the phone into the Serpentine Lake at Hyde park.

 

 

 

Terror teeters at the periphery of Sherlock's existence all the time now. It's the permanence of his recent actions and the painful decisions he will have to continue to make. It threatens to crumble his composure but he forces himself not to think about it, any of it, until he has a carefully administered dose of heroin coursing through his veins, dulling the worst edge of his anxiety.

Back in the Days Before John, drugs used to be quite sufficient in silencing the biochemistry of his emotions. Now they merely dilute it. He's had a glimpse of what his life could've been and he can't not mourn the loss of that hope.

He tries to believe that it's just his serotonin stocks depleting when he keeps feeling like he's about to fall off a cliff, and tries to convince himself it's just the catecholiamines increasing his ejection fraction when he feels like his heart is being torn into pieces. It's just transport. 

He needs these lies to function, so that he'll not start hyperventilating at Tesco or collapse into a boneless heap on the Tube.

He feels like a reactive idiot. Mycroft was always better at control. Sherlock was the one to throw tantrums and demand, demand and demand incessantly, because there could not exist an option that the universe would not give him what he wanted.

Until now. 

On a cloudy Tuesday, instead of going home after making himself busy by running some errands, he walks to Embankment pier and sits down on a bench, staring into the murky grey Thames waters. 

He feels the effects of the heroin he took two hours earlier starting to dilute. This phase always makes him feel bitter and slow and he knows this isn't the right time to allow himself to remember, but he does anyway.

He lets the windows of his Mind Palace fling open, and ghosts begin freely moving in and out. Ghosts of days past, days when everything was new and exciting, a heart-shaped promise of excitement and companionship.

He remembers the first night he and John spent at Baker Street. 

Sherlock had had a hard time deciding how to be polite yet curious, friendly but not hovering. How long can I linger near his door, trying to make conversation? Am I expected to serve tea? Who should purchase the toilet paper? How much space should there be in the small cupboard above the sink for John's razor? 

He had spied on John as the man had unpacked his bags and emptied his boxes, curious to see what he could deduce from what little John had in terms of possessions. The gun had been a slight surprise but on hindsight it was quite logical, really, considering John's penchant for dangerous things.

Dangerous things such as Sherlock.

Dangerous things such as Mary.

They had had dinner - takeaway between stacks of big cardboard boxes full of their assorted belongings- and tea, and talked about this and that. Then John had told him goodnight and climbed upstairs. Sherlock remembers lying in bed at midnight, not tired at all. He hadn't actually wanted to settle in for the night yet, but had figured that it might serve as evidence of his flatmateship skills if he did not linger in the livingroom, making noise. 

Sherlock had listened to the sounds John's feet made on the creaky floorboards, trying to figure out what the man was doing. It had been oddly comforting that someone was there with him in the apartment. For the first time in his life he was living with a person he had chosen. Family you were born into, school dorm occupants were assigned, but John he had chosen and John had looked at him and talked to him and said yes even after realizing Sherlock was not exactly a normal bloke. 

Yes, I will come with you. Yes, I will live with you. You're brilliant.

John had smiled at him and complimented him and said yes, God yes to it all, and that's what had lead Sherlock him into this very hell.

The happiness-inducing effects of John's appreciative expressions had always been longer-lived than the brief highs given by cocaine. No wonder Sherlock had been willing to exchange a lonely but peaceful existence for a friendly smile.

John makes him giddy and needy and makes him feel special. Sherlock hates the part of himself that still wants to make John proud and glad, to prove he's not the cold front he presents to most people. That he's not the person John had yelled at when he held John and Mary's infant son while drugged to the eyeballs.

John had seen right through him when they had met. And he had not turned away like all others. 'I consider myself married to my work.' Fucking idiot. John's question about his relationship status had been a curveball and Sherlock had panicked. Nobody wants to be rejected but that is not what John had been aiming for, was it? 

How could he blame John now, in light of that conversation, for taking him at face value and moving on?

Sherlock lights a cigarette and leans back on the Thamesside bench. The nicotine offers little solace.


	3. Ghost stories

_No need to disguise or to pretend_  
_Don't misconstrue and don't misapprehend_  
_There's nothing left, no fortress to defend_  
_Because tonight's the night that we begin the end_  
_\- Placebo_

 

There's a case the next day. It's easy. It should be fun. Sherlock should be ecstatic. 

There are no discernible differences between now and back when Sherlock first began working these sorts of things for the Met. Still, there is all the difference. There's no echo to his brilliance, no admiring audience now to the one man show he keeps up. 

Anderson, of all people, asks if he's alright. He tells Anderson to fuck off and die. Even though this is more crass than his usual language, everyone still takes this as a clear sign that he must be quite alright, really. Sherlock refuses to try to analyze what exactly in his demeanour has warranted such an inquiry in the first place.

After the case wraps up Lestrade practically manhandles him into an empty room. His eyes are cold and Sherlock feels like he's about to be scolded by the headmaster. 

"Get clean or get gone," Lestrade tells Sherlock.

Sherlock scoffs as theatrically as he can possibly muster and leaves. 

What is the point, exactly? The veil has dropped. There's always going to be a case. He's always going to be clever. Nothing new under the sun. It all goes around and around and never stops. And Sherlock is always going to be looking over his shoulder to see whether John is standing there.

Sherlock realizes that for a man who could go anywhere, do anything, his territory is surprisingly small. Baker street, crime scene, Barts, Met. 

He doesn't want to go home so he decides to go to the Barts pathology department. Molly presents him with a wonderful opportunity to deduce the state of her latest sordid attempt at a monogamous relationship. Something stops Sherlock from speaking his mind. There are some mouth-watering observations to be verbalized, but he doesn't because John's voice in his head again. 'It's mean, don't do it.'

Sherlock wants to physically tear John from inside his skull. His fingers clench into fists as he leans onto the laminary cabinet in the forensic chemistry lab. 

Without getting anything worthwhile done he leaves without a word, leaving Molly standing there, fingering her ridiculously green designer scarf.

 

 

 

Sherlock remembers the first time John brought a date home to Baker Street. Sherlock had been in his room and John had probably thought he was asleep. 

The supporting walls of the apartment building carry high-frequency noises better than low ones. Noises such as the ghastly screeching of the hag John had chosen to cavort with that evening. It had been was a rude awakening of sorts for Sherlock - before it he had dismissed the notion that John could find someone and leave as hogwash. That night had raised the possibility that this life was not John's destination, merely a bachelor pad en route to suburban bliss.

Sherlock had wanted to sneak closer to hear better, to hear John better to be precise, because this was new and Sherlock had been as curious as he had been indignant, but the stairs were too creaky and he thus aborted his attempt to go upstairs.

Still, despite his best efforts of anchoring down a woman, John had always returned home when Sherlock no matter what he had been doing. Sherlock's text messages had been his siren song, and even if numerous intercourse attempts of John's had been thwarted because of minutiae like a minor crisis over Sherlock's lost sock, he was never really that angry. Sometimes he even laughed. 'You do know what the word cockblocking means, don't you?' John had once asked while fixing the showerhead Sherlock had taken a hammer to prior to texting John about it. 

 

 

 

Back at home, Sherlock shoves a concerned-looking Mrs Hudson back to the staircase landing when she tries to enter the flat and determinedly closes the door in her face.

He digs out his computer and updates his website. There are several points he's been meaning to make about sediment patterns in shallow graves. It's a distraction as good as any.

He scrolls through the comments sections of his previous posts. One of them makes his fingers halt and his chest constrict.

 _15:23 J_Watson_  
_We need to talk. Call me. Or text. Anything. Please, Sherlock._

Sherlock flips the lid of his laptop shut. 

He realizes there's no escape. At this rate it's only a matter of time before John will appear on the doorstep.

Because that's what his life has become. Waiting for John Watson to appear. And maybe fix everything, somehow.

Sherlock idly wanders from room to room, letting the doors of his Mind Palace finally fling open, releasing everything that has been looking for escape.

The devouring emptiness of the apartment when he comes home late at night. 

The way he sometimes deliberately witholds his deductions to keep John around longer instead of him returning home to Chiswick and Mary and the baby. 

The nights he used to stand outside John's room at Baker Street, too afraid to go in but at the same time desperate for a sign, any sign that he might be welcome to come in and claim the only thing he has ever truly wanted for himself. 

The luminous moments when their gazes locked and the world disappeared. 

Stolen glances at John dozing off in his armchair, towel or pyjama slipping and revealing an inch of skin. 

A longing so intense Sherlock had been certain his heart would give out. 

It's all trying to break out now, like a river crashing through a dam. Sherlock draws in a ragged breath and somehow stops himself from further descent into despair.

Not yet. Not now. Not ever. He needs to get it under control again. The solution, literally, is in his coat pocket. 

 

 

It takes about three seconds for the cocaine to cross his blood-brain barrier. The dendrites of his nerve cells spark into life like the glowing wire in a light bulb, and he feels the cells of his grey matter ignite like gunpowder, making new connections and enhancing old ones. Everything is sharper, brighter, the universe is screaming at him but he can take it, take all of it, register it, categorize it, control it. Conquer it. 

His heart leaps into tachycardia, blood singing in his ears as his blood pressure rises. He squeezes his fingers into a fist as his peripheral veins dilate and make his hands warm even though all the windows are open and the cold night air is pouring in. 

He lays motionless on the floor. The moon shines, cars go by, life goes on outside 221b Baker Street. Inside, time seems to stand still.

After a while, a wave of nausea comes and passes, leaving in its wake a restlessness. Even the slightest sounds from the street and other floors of the apartment building almost startle him. He fights the yearning to strip off all of his clothing as his skin is now oversensitized and irritating. 

The high should have felt so glorious, like it used to, but something is different now.

As much as he hates to think about it, he knows it's because John is still there in the background somewhere. Like a ghost watching him from the ceiling.

Sherlock wants to scratch John's name onto the skin of his arm with his fingernails, let it bleed until he's all light-headed, and then gouge the words out with a knife. 

The heroin finally, mercifully kicks in. 

Everything slows into a trickle, his bones melt back into careless elastic, he flows like a river in his body and everything is dulled, both the pain and the perception of it. He wants nothing but to float away in the arms of the drug like he used to, drift further and further away until the reality of his life is merely a memory, a whisper in the wind. 

Not even heroin offers full oblivion now. It must be because his receptors are now attuned to a very different sort of a mind-altering experience, and its effects are longer-lasting and more potent than any chemical ever could offer.

He's in love. 

It needs to stop.

 

 

 

The withdrawal comes on again the next morning. He medicates it with a carefully titrated cocktail and it's glorious. Every cell blooms, his blood sings with the universe and everything becomes a little less sharp. He can bend the world and everything in it to his will now.

Everything but John's heart.

It's not such a stupid metaphor, really, the heart as a centre of human desires. If it breaks, it kills you.

Despite the heroin and the cocaine and the fentanyl and the amphetamine, John is in his head again, telling him he's being stupid, stupid, stupid, careless and why would you do this to me.

You machine, John said but he was so wrong.

It was supposed to be a deal. Don't be dead and I will be here. Don't be dead and we can continue, the two of us, together.

Stupid, so stupid. He couldn't possibly expect John to uphold his end if the man didn't even know about the contract?

Maybe choosing Mary over him was the ultimate revenge for those two years.

The concept sounds surprisingly cruel and John doesn't do cruel things. Or does he?

Loving, wonderful, well-meaning John.

This is where they always drew the line, didn't they? See but not touch. Close but not completely together. Why did it never occur to Sherlock that being gone for two years wouldn't automatically change the precarious status quo? He'd thought that John just wasn't ready but on the eve of their wedding he had realized that it wasn't about that. 

John just didn't want him.

As a friend, sure. As a comrade, certainly. As anything else - apparently not. 

The initial high of the drugs is coming down and Sherlock feels infuriatingly restless. His heads feels tight as if there's a thunderstorm approaching. 

Sherlock grabs his laptop and opens his website. There's a new comment.

 _23:44 J_Watson_  
_Sherlock I am so, so sorry. I need to talk to you. What happened to your phone?_

Sorry never fixed anything, did it? 

Sherlock lets the laptop slide down onto the sofa. His bones feel melted and soft, he's spineless and weak. 

Everything is filled to the brim with John now, and it's trying to seep out of him.

He slowly stands up and walks around, running his fingertips along different surfaces and objects in the sitting room. This is a book they argued over, because John hadn't finished reading it yet, but Sherlock deduced the ending from the first three paragraphs while reading over John's shoulder and triumphantly announced the murderer out loud. 

This is the lamp cord John once tripped over and spilled his tea on the carpet.

This is John's jumper, abandoned behind the sofa where it always fell when he hung it on the backrest while watching EastEnders.

Sherlock giggles. He's losing control of all of it now, everything is flooding in like a tidal wave, the way in which John has infused into every corner of his existence.

This is the kitchen knife John secretly passed him when the Korean mafia had broken into the flat and were holding them at gunpoint.

This is the tiny bloodstain on the wall John had never noticed, and thus not wiped off after Sherlock had gotten blood everywhere after cutting his thumb open with a microscope slide.

These are John's favourite biscuits, now stale because Sherlock always left the packet open because he hates cranberry.

This is Sherlock, who can't live without John.

The weight of it all suddenly crushes him and his legs give out. He crumples to the floor, ragged breaths turning into sobs, tears falling unbridled down his cheeks. He hugs his arms around himself because if he doesn't he will surely go to pieces. 

Everything here haunts him. Everything is filled with John, smells of John, whispers about him.

Sherlock needs to leave. There's no way around it. Here the future is like a black hole he's hurtling towards at light speed. 

If he stays at Baker Street, he'll become nothing but a ghost of their story. A pitiful phantom of the losing side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point I would love to share with you the wonderful music I've used with inspiration here. 
> 
> Skunk Anansie's "[Because Of You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNxpykpRo0)" was practically my theme song for this fic.
> 
> Other important inspirations:
> 
> Placebo: [Song To Say Goodbye](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7bxXjQL3cY)  
> Skunk Anansie: [I Hope You Get To Meet Your Hero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVu1Zs6Rl2U)  
> Lauren Aquilina: [Lilo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fXQXxn-LnA)  
> Placebo: A Million Little Pieces  
> Placebo: Begin The End  
> Placebo: The Crawl  
> Nothing But Thieves: Six Billion


	4. Waiting to drown

He detoxes himself. It's hell. 

When it's at its worst he's calling out loud for John, reaching out towards the darkness in his bedroom with his fingers. 

In the morning when he tries to get up and his chest hurts as though he's about to have a coronary, he thinks about calling someone else for help. Molly's name occurs but it's no good since she would probably insist on calling John.

Some agonizing hours later, Mrs Hudson finally hears him hurtling an organic chemistry tome against the wall to channel some of his frustration, and comes up to sit with him. She makes him drink some Mountain Dew. Even if she does realize what exactly is going on, she refrains from commenting.

Once the sweating, the nausea and everything else are finally beginning to dissipate some eighty-eight hours past his last dose, Mrs Hudson pats Sherlock on the shoulder with a knowing look and returns downstairs.

Sherlock needs to prove to himself that he can do this, get off the sauce, stay clean just by the strenght of his willpower. 

Mycroft thinks he's a liability. John thinks he needs looking after. 

He discards his sweaty pyjama on the bathroom floor. He won't be around for much longer so no need to sort out the laundry.

He needs a battle plan. Some sort of a contact person, something to start from when he leaves London behind. He realizes he doesn't have a whole lot of options. If his territory geographically has been small lately, his circle of friends has been smaller. It has always been that way.

There is one person in all of the world who he could possibly contact in a situation like this, who would not judge but would not pity him either and who understands all about fresh starts and leaving everything behind. 

When his hands stop shaking too much he determinedly digs around his wardrobe for the pink mobile phone he deposited there years earlier. The battery's dead, and he drums his fingertips in a frantic staccato on the kitchen table while waiting for it to load enough that he can send just one message.

They will be an alliance of lost souls, those forced to abandon their lives because they lost the game. They will not be lovers. Nor will they be friends. But they will learn from one another. They will survive. And when Sherlock has scraped together the remnants of his life, their ways will part.

He sends the message.

DINNER IN MARRAKECH? SH

An hour later, a reply arrives.

OF COURSE, MY DARLING BOY. FRIDAY AT SIX, BAHIA PALACE COURTYARD. 

 

 

 

Mary walks in when Sherlock is just about to call Mycroft to arrange his plane tickets. Let the overbearing idiot of a brother be useful for a change.

Mary uses John's keys to get in which is a tad intrusive, really.

"You were sent to spy on me, then," Sherlock points out and passes Mary the cup of tea he's just made for himself. Why is he serving tea? He has better things to do. Morbid curiosity, probably. A vice that needs exorcizing. 

"He won't tell me anything," Mary pleads, "I know something's dead wrong when he doesn't even try to lie that everything's fine. He just sits there."

"So you came to me because you think I won't lie to you?"

Mary cocks an eyebrow. "Will you?"

Mary doesn't like mind games. She probably used to, back when a simple, benign life with a family wasn't number one on her bucket list.

Sherlock pushes an idle curl behind his ear. "It's over. We're over. I am incompatible with his life. Simple as that."

"You made a promise to stay by him. Stay by us." Mary sounds like he doesn't quite grasp the finality of the situation.

"As John himself pointed out, the best thing that I could have done for him was to stay away. Not come back from the dead, even though he asked me to."

"He can't have said that," Mary claims. 

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "You weren't there. I apologize for being shortsighted and not recording our conversation."

Mary bites her lip. "Even if he did, you have to give him a break. The baby's been ill, it's all a nightmare, really. You've never had a spat before?"

Oh Mary. What a sickeningly admirable thing to do - trying to patch things up between your husband and his silly mate. Sherlock knows, however, that Mary isn't stupid enough to think of their relationship in such mild terms. It's intriguing to entertain the idea that Mary might be more aware than even John himself of what is going on here.

"What's between you two is between you two, but you need to talk to him. Even if he hurt you, you owe him a chance to explain."

Owe him. Owe him? Owe him! Owe the man, who rewards Sherlock's two years of personal hell trying to keep both of them alive, with breaking his heart?

Sherlock smiles but it's not a warm one. "You don't need to placate for him. He makes his own choices."

"We all love you, you know. That doesn't just stop overnight."

"That, Mrs Watson, is precisely the problem."

 

 

Afterwards Sherlock is proud of his self-restraint during Mary's visit. He had resisted the overwhelming urge to interrogate her about John's state of mind, what John has or has not been saying, doing, feeling, everything. Mary carries with her the love of John and Sherlock wants to bask in it, just for a moment, just for a tiny moment before the last vestiges of it leave his orbit.

After Mary leaves he wants to scream, tear out his hair, anything, but he's too tired, too wrung-out to do anything but sit on the sofa and hang his neck over the armrest until his head feels constricted with pooling blood. 

Being alone should calm him but the thought of travel, the promise and dread of the unknown are putting his teeth on edge. His last travels were not leisurely. There are memories trying to escape from the confines of his mind, memories of night flights in cargo planes, nursing broken fingers, of hunger and exhaustion and missing John as though his very heartbeat had been singing the syllables of the man's name.

He tries playing the violin. His concentration isn't enough to go through any actual compositions, so he ends up screeching whatever bits and pieces come to mind. As a distraction it's not much. He has a debate in his head whether he should leave the violin behind when he leaves. He decides against it. It was his before John, and it can be his again after.

Sherlock is standing by the windows, bow raised and violin cradled against his shoulder, when he spots a familiar figure negotiating the afternoon pedestrian traffic. 

John.

Of course he would show up.

Alarm floods his veins as he watches John approach the building. Suddenly there's an intense impulse to stop the man from entering, because if John stands here in this room, Sherlock's determination will crumble and his judgement will be clouded and it will all go to hell. It will make him regret and doubt and mourn and that's all he's been doing for so long it's got to stop.

He discards his violin on the sofa and hurries downstairs. He opens the door just as John is about to insert his key into the lock. 

John's hand pauses in midair and his eyes shoot up to meet Sherlock's. 

"There you are. Are you heading out? Case?"

Sherlock remains in the doorway, his arm blocking John's path. He closes his eyes momentarily, willing his breathing to calm down. He's a little winded from hurrying down the steps, but mostly it's his shot nerves.

"You're not going out without your coat, are you? It's kind of cold in here," John informs him with a slightly nervous smile. It sounds like the John Sherlock lived with, who always made sure he ate, slept and dressed warmly.

No more.

"I'm not going out," Sherlock phrases carefully, averting his gaze from John's eyes. 

John rubs his palms together. He's clearly forgotten his gloves. Sherlock's breath mists in the cold air and the hairs on his arms are standing up. Whether it's from cold or something else, Sherlock doesn't bother to analyze.

"Well, good, then, I guess. We should --" John starts and steps towards the door, expecting Sherlock to move aside. He doesn't. Instead Sherlock's gaze narrows into an accusing glare and he straightens his spine. 

"No," Sherlock says.

John cocks his head, confused. "What do you mean, no?"

They're standing awfully, infuriatingly close. Sherlock swallows. Is this close enough for John? It's like playing with matches, what they've done for years, letting the spark alight and then blowing it out the minute it starts to become painful. Or confusing. Not allowed to cross the line. 

"No. As in you should leave."

John is taken aback. "You're not going to let me into my own home?"

"It's not your home. As you have made abundantly clear."

John finally takes a step back and crosses his arms. "You want to do this out here, then? Fine. Your way, as always." John sticks his pockets into his coat pockets, swallows and looks a bit sheepish. "I was out of line. You have no idea how tired I was. I'm so, so ---"

"No," Sherlock says pointedly.

"Let me finish for fuck's sake!" 

"No."

"Your vocabulary has really deteriorated lately." John rubs his neck with his fingers and looks at Sherlock with sadness in his expression. "This isn't you."

Sherlock lets his scowl soften ever so slightly. "No, this hasn't really been me for a long time."

"Look, I really don't want to get into this here in the street. I wish you'd just let me--"

Sherlock wedges himself between the door and the doorframe. 

John bites his lip. "This is getting ridiculous. What is wrong with you?"

"You. You is what's wrong with me." Sherlock doesn't even realize he's raising his voice.

"Is this what we do now, shout at each other in the street?" John doesn't look very angry anymore. Instead there is acute concern burning in his eyes.

Sherlock realizes he has never raised his voice at John like this. It's usually John who yells at him for various reasons concerning social conduct, housework or chemical accidents.

He would give his left arm if he could have John back to himself at Baker Street, yelling at him in a lecturing tone but smiling eyes like he used to. But it's not to be.

"We can't do this anymore, John," Sherlock says quietly and now whatever steely determination he had left is gone. He has to go, has to leave the scene before he descends back to where he's been for years now, the quiet desperation and the letting go. Always letting go. Always. 

This isn't sudden or uncharacteristic, no matter what John thinks. At the end of this tightrope is nothing but a fall. And he's nearly at the end now.

Sherlock gently shoves an increasingly upset-looking John away from the door, slides in through the doorway and bangs the door shut behind him. 

His legs refuse to carry him to the staircase. He lets himself slide against the wall to sit on the worn, dusty floow-to-floor carpet. He imagines he can somehow feel John's presence behind the door as though they're connected by some invisible thread. This is how he's felt for a long time, that no matter where he goes, no matter who John spends his nights with there's still going to be this strange connection. 

The connection is not indestructible. Maybe it was all just in his head after all. Maybe the way John regards their relationship isn't similar at all. Maybe John came here to be his friend again.

He had a perfectly functional existence before John Watson came along but now there's no way to go back to that now. It's not possible to delete what he's felt during the past three years and be content with how things were before. 

Sherlock drags himself up from the floor. His muscles ache, his eyes prickle with tears and his chest feels strangely constricted. 

He walks up the stairs only to pause in the doorway when he realizes he was about to turn his head to make sure John had following him up the stairs like he used to. Muscle memory. 

The yearning to shoot up again, the siren call of the heroin is almost too much. He wants to dull it all but he knows it won't work anymore. There's nothing to help him through this except time. 

He idles to the window to watch John walk away towards the Baker Street tube station. He imagines their invisible connection disappearing, fading into nothingness, drifting away like an unmoored boat. It's worse than anything he went through during those abysmal two years of self-appointed exile. 

Years' worth of tears are prickling under his eyelids and there's nothing to stop them now.

 

 

 

It's a testament to the better qualities of Mycroft Holmes, that when he's sitting on the old sofa of the apartment, facing his younger brother who has tears staining his shirt and snot hanging from his nose from what Mummy would call hysterics, he has nothing but concern and empathy in his expression.

"Caring is not an advantage?" Sherlock wails in a mocking, congested and shaky tone, tears in still in freefall, "Don't get involved? Isn't that what you're going to say?"

Mycroft sighs. "No. What I truly want to say is that I'm sorry."

"Beg your pardon?"

"Contrary to your belief, I don't enjoy sorting out your messes. The time during which you have been associated with John Watson I have been able to enjoy a much more leisurely lifestyle than before. Much fewer Sherlock-related crises to sort through. You've grown up lately, brother mine, and I truly am sorry that it's had to have happened at the expense of your happiness. Still, leaving London, I'm not sure if --"

"There's no way out, Mycroft. No other way, I mean."

"Than running away from your problems?"

"I can't face him. Not ever again."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that. You might be on a rage-fuelled adrenaline kick here, but the reality of actually leaving John Watson behind might not be so easy."

Sherlock tries to scoff but his nose is so stuffy it comes out more as a snort. "What do you know about these sort of things, anyway?"

Mycroft's expression is mournful. "You don't know everything about me, brother mine."


	5. Erasing the lines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we arrive at the the very end. The reception this story has gotten has been flabbergastingly amazingly wonderfully overwhelming! I want to thank each and every one of my readers and commenters and reviewers and agonizers-over-all-this-angst. I was actually pretty nervous to edit and post this chapter - I know I have wrecked hearts (as you have told me repeatedly) with this piece so I hope this delivers some much-needed solace.
> 
> Without further ado, I hope you enjoy chapter 5/5.

_Should we lose everything we've got_  
_Or settle for something that we're not?_  
_And all will be forgiven_  
_If we go back_  
_Can we go back?_  
_\- Lauren Aquilina_

 

Mycroft gives him a ride to Gatwick the next morning.

Sherlock has packed just one bag. He's left behind almost all of his clothes and practically all of his other possessions. Only a one-way ticket booked.

He doesn't know what the future holds nor does he make any plans. All he knows is where he'll be at six p.m. on Friday, two days from now. Everything beyond that will take shape later. He'll leave it to chance. Let the universe point him in some direction.

It's strangely liberating, the thought that no rules, no expectations exist now.

He doesn't know if he's looking forward to seeing Irene. Or dreading it.

"I wish you wouldn't go to her. She brought out your insecurities," Mycroft had said.

Sherlock wanted to point out that John sometimes managed to achieve the very same thing but he didn't. Mostly because he had no desire to speak the name out loud.

Mycroft had insisted that they arrive at the airport early, using some work-related meeting as an excuse. Sherlock suspected that his brother might have been hiding something, but he doesn't bother trying to figure out what. Probably some secret government plan he would hate Sherlock deducing and ruining just to spite him.

None of that matters now. Soon he'll be gone.

Sherlock texts Lestrade from the car, announcing that he'll not be taking on any cases for the time being. He texts Molly to let her know that he's going to be doing some traveling.

Mrs Hudson already knows. She cried. "Both my boys, all gone now," she had said, even though Sherlock had claimed he was just taking a sabbatical.

In the car, Sherlock watches London pass by. When then drive past Buckingham Palace it suddenly comes back like one of John's flashbacks from the war: holding Benjamin, John's eyes piercing his, his words ringing in his ears, making an impact much worse than being physically punched in the face.

Sherlock tries to remind himself that they were just words, words said during a sleep-deprived angry spat. Somehow this only makes everything worse because it rekindles the faint hope that there is something salvageable here.

There can't be. The exit wounds left by those words still feel like gaping holes in Sherlock's chest. It's a betrayal of trust, a broken promise - the unspoken promise that John, his John, would never, ever hurt him like this. That he could keep a little scrap of John's heart if he just obeyed, played his part, remained the faithful friend watching with a plastered-on smile as John paraded his new life in front of him.

All Sherlock would have needed to do was to never utter a word about what he himself would want, what he might need.

Turns out the price had been too steep.

Unwittingly he had become just another conquest in the chronicles of Three Continents Watson. Or not even a conquest. Sherlock's role had been limited to listening through the surprisingly thin walls of 221B Baker Street as John freely dealt out his devotion to a parade of females.

Four years of living together, fighting together, suffering apart and together, learning to push each other's buttons.

He and John had been breaking each other to pieces for a long time now.

No more.

 

 

Mycroft doesn't exactly hug him, but touches his shoulder with three fingers. "Keep in touch?" he inquires politely.

Sherlock nods. There's a time and place for Mycroft-insulting, and this is not it.

Sherlock enters the air terminal, proceeds through check-in and security, and walks to his gate. He could wait in a lounge, as Mycroft had seen fit to book him first-class tickets, but he doesn't bother finding out its location. Waiting there won't make the plane leave sooner.

He sits in a grimy chair in the corner of the mostly empty departure gate, his bag between his legs. He digs out his phone, plugs in his headphones and lets Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole flow into his ears.

He tries to calm himself down. Crying in an airport departures hall would be mortifying.

Stay and destruct or leave and survive. It's as simple as that.

 

 

 

Forty minutes later he tears off the headphones from his ears. There's still plenty of time before boarding starts. He idly browses the music selection on his phone until there's a tap on his shoulder.

He looks up and everything goes to hell.

It's John.

It's John in his blue coat, the one Sherlock once told him was both sensible and fashionable, in his oldest pair of shoes and a cheap dress shirt. His hands are in his pockets.

Sherlock's mind goes blank. He has no idea what he's supposed to say. He opens and then closes his mouth.

John is watching him with an expression that is a mixture of worry, relief and apprehension. Sherlock doesn't like it. It's hard to interpret.

"This area is for passengers only," Sherlock finally blurts out because this is factual information and he likes factual information. It's safe and understandable.

To further emphasize his point he points at the plane ticket lying on top of his suitcase.

John pulls his hand from his pocket. He's holding an identical plane ticket.

This must be Mycroft's doing. The meddlesome, irritating, pompous, idiotic ----- He tries to get the rage going but for some reason Sherlock can't bring himself to be angry.

He's drained, depleted, empty now. How is he supposed to survive leaving if John is here, standing right next to him?

If it's even possible, John looks worse than him. Determined, but deeply haunted. In his vindiction Sherlock had imagined John going about his day as though nothing had happened, smiling and fulfilling the duties of a good family man. This John doesn't look the part. This John looks a lot like his John, the one who nearly lost his will to live after he'd thought Sherlock had committed suicide.

Sherlock straightens his wrinkled coatsleeve with a shaky finger. "Go home to your family," he says quietly, not daring to look at John anymore.

John descends down onto one knee in front of him and they can't avoid locking gazes anymore. "Sherlock." It's not a question, it's a mild scolding.

Sherlock rubs his forefinger up the side of his nose. He has run out of clever retorts and it's hateful how he has no idea how to function in a situation like this.

He's never been in a situation like this.

"You're my family. And we're yours," John says as though reminding him of something he's supposed to already be aware of.

Sherlock doesn't reply. He stares out the large window across the runways.

John drags himself back into a standing position and leans forward to stretch his leg - the old psychosomatic limp has returned, Sherlock realizes.

John then sits down next to him without even asking permission, and pointedly leans his palms onto his knees. It's a nervous tick John has in awkward social situations.

Sherlock dislikes an awkward John. John is supposed to be his gauge of how to behave.

John draws in a breath and lets his gaze roam around the gate nervously.

"When you left--- Our place, I mean--- I-- I wanted to run after you. Take a cab hom--- to Baker Street. Mary said I shouldn't. I felt bad for taking her advice."

"She came to see me."

John is taken aback. Mary adn't apparently informed John of her visit to Baker Street. "What did she say to you? Did she tell you to leave? If she did, I swear--"

Sherlock looks indignant. "You can blame her all you want but she did no such thing. Out of the two of you, she is the honest one. Which brings us to the question: what are you doing here?"

John bites his lip. "Mycroft told me about your plan. For God's sakes, Sherlock, it was just a row. People have them. I'm sorry. I overreacted. I was bloody tired, not in the mood to discuss my personal business."

"I was under the impression I was part of your personal business," Sherlock says pointedly. It would be so deceptively easy to dismiss everything as a misguided argument solely about James Sholto, but they both must be aware of the connotations of that conversation, as pertaining to Sherlock.

"I'm sorry for challenging your preconceptions of yourself," Sherlock says after somehow rediscovering the last vestiges of his snark.

"That doesn't sound like an apology. Not that you need to offer one. You're just you, always morbidly curious to learn every dirty secret of everyone you ever meet."

Sherlock stands up, anger suddenly flaring up "Curiosity killed the cat, then? I'm to be ignored and ridiculed because I wanted to understand?"

John looks down. "Look, it's hard, you have no idea what was -- You have no idea how hard it was back then with James--"

"I have no idea of what it's like to love someone who doesn't love you back? Someone who will punish you forever just for protecting them? Someone who will have anyone but you?"

John gapes but this time he doesn't look angry.

Sherlock decides that he has nothing to lose here. Truth will out and all that nonsense. "You really don't realize that leaving you was and is the hardest thing I've ever done, do you? Two years ago I felt knowing that I'd probably never see you again. I gave you a chance to keep your life and nearly lost my own in the process. This is how you repay me, by flaunting in my face the fact that no matter what I did it would never be me who you truly wanted. Never."

"I would have done anything for you," John says so quietly it's almost a whisper.

"But you never did, did you?" Sherlock replies quietly, wrapping his coat tighter around himself like an armour.

"So this is it, you just give up on us then? I can't give you all you want, whatever the hell that is, but you won't even let me try?"

"I lost, Mary won, end of the story."

John holds up his plane ticket and Sherlock can now see, to his confusion, that there are actually two tickets.

"There's one thing you don't know and I'm sorry I never told you. Before I married Mary I told her one thing. I told her there's one absolute dealbreaker. One rule. I would always, always follow you. I got you back from the dead once and I'm sure as hell not going to lose you again. Not ever. Where you go, I follow and anyone who wants to be in my life must follow by extension. Mary told me this would not deter her. So here we are. You can try to leave, but we follow. Mary's outside the terminal with Benjamin. We're all packed to go."

Sherlock is staring at him, mesmerized and confused.

John draws in a deep breath. "We're not you and me, we're us. Together. You're always the first and the most important, but now there's just more backup."

"A baby is not backup."

"A baby with Sherlock Holmes as his godparent will be enough backup for anyone."

Sherlock tries to understand what is being said here.

It's not what he had ever expected.

He just wanted John.

"If you want to go alone, I won't stop you," John stammers and Sherlock is alarmed to see a tear at the corner of his eye. "I'm so rubbish at this, really."

John hurries to wipe away the tear with his knucle before it runs onto his cheek, and lets out a hollow laugh. "If you want to go, go. But if there's even a snowball's chance that there exists some sort of a life for you that I could still be part of, even if it's not exactly the way you want, than it could still be something, you know? Something we could try?"

Sherlock says nothing.

John clears his throat. "I broke us. I was supposed to see what was going on with you, to fix you. It's my job and I love it, I love fixing you," John tells him in a tear-strained voice, "Not that there's anything wrong with you, but you know what I mean."

"I know," Sherlock breathes.

"Don't ever doubt that I love you," John says suddenly and Sherlock's mind is suddenly plummeted into freefall.

John Watson, who can both destroy him and resurrect him from the ashes.

His John. Mary's John. Why had it never occurred that these things could coexist? Or could they?

He's curious now. He wants to experiment.

"I don't know what it means, what any of it means and how all these pieces can possibly fit together but I want you to stay more than I want anything in this life, and I'm going to go out on a fucking limb here and say that you don't really want to go either. I sure as hell don't want you to."

Sherlock draws in a ragged breath and finally dares to look at John, whose hands are shaking and who looks like he's as close to falling apart as Sherlock himself is.

"I don't want to spend a single minute apart from you. You hear me? And I also want to spend my life with my family. Does this make any sense?" John asks in a pleading tone.

Sherlock doesn't even know what John is promising him here, but the thought of leaving is beginning to feel increasingly unreasonable. Sherlock's heart races. Dare he give himself hope that this could possibly work without him breaking into pieces over and over and over again?

Hope is a brittle creature. Sherlock isn't good with brittle things.

"What I'm trying to say is that we're all going to live at Baker Street. Together. If you'll have me. Us."

Sherlock blinks. Twice. What was that again?

"I've thought this through. The apartment downstairs has no tenants and it can easily be combined to the rest of the place."

Sherlock wants to argue the practicalities, calculate floor areas, argue about the baby needing space but something in John's eyes tells him there's likely already a plan in his head and even if there isn't, then John sure as hell isn't going to let it stop him from doing this .

Sherlock is reeling. Nothing of this sort has ever occurred to him. Maybe it's not what he thought he wants, but this... He could never walk away from this, could he? Perhaps he could want this?

"My life would be so different without you. There would be no Mary, no baby. Nothing. I would probably still be in that fucking bedsit if I hadn't blown my brains out if I hadn't met you. You have no idea how bad it was. I never told you."

Sherlock does know how it is. He's lived in that hell now, thinking his life could ever be good again.

On the other hand, John didn't even had the drugs at his disposal to soften the blow, so it must've been infinitely worse. How John could have endured that and survived, Sherlock has no idea.

Sherlock knows he can't possibly survive without John. Leaving wouldn't have changed that.

It's all a bit overwhelming now, all this new information. A sudden sense of strange claustrophobia-like nervousness hits and without even making a conscious decision to do so Sherlock stands up, hands reaching out for support in a fumbling gesture, his composure crumbling when it all gets a bit too much, all the pain mixing with something yet undefined and tentative and gentle and lovely and frightening, so frightening---

"Hey. Hey--- Sherlock--" John has raced to his feet and grabs hold of him, wrapping his arms around Sherlock's waist and holding tight.

Sherlock nearly can't breathe but he doesn't even need to. John can do it for the both of them.

John is right. They are tied together, this life they have, they've constructed together. It can't go on unless they stay together.

Sherlock blinks twice, shaking himself out of his light-headed reverie to realize John is talking to him in a quiet voice.

"--And the bit I'm most sorry about is insinuating that I don't trust you with Benjamin. I do. Completely. Even if you went completely insane and were coked out of your skull I would still know you'd let nothing happen to him."

Sherlock nods. John is close, so close, he can smell John's cheap aftershave and a bit of Clair De Lune and it's lovely and intoxicating.

"And Mary trusts you, too."

Sherlock finally extricates himself from John, runs a hand through his hair and manages to reach a modicum of composure. "Still, she's your wife. She might trust me with your son but not with you."

"That's none of her concern. She lost the priviledge to demand anything from me when she shot you. Mary's my wife. You're my person. She's my wife and you're my person. She knows this, she's always known, and she chose to stay."

In a way, John is giving him permission. Permission for these things he's been feeling for a long time.

Sherlock stifles a nervous laugh. What would Irene say if he had showed up with the entire Watson family in tow?

Maybe it's not John who has been fruitlessly trying to box their relationship under convenient labels and rules. There has been a line. A strict line. Things you can do, things you can't. Who drew it, John or Sherlock or neither?

Kissing John Watson in an airport is definitely on the wrong side of that line.

Sherlock does it anyway, and even thought John's performance is sort of careful, sort of awkward, sort of confused, it's something. Not exactly the way Sherlock had imagined their first kiss, but when in life does anything match fantasy anyway?

Sherlock then scrutinizes John's face as though he would a crime scene, trying to find evidence of discomfort, disgust or dislike. He finds none. John actually looks giddy, amused and happy.

He has made John happy by doing a thing like that. How is it possible?

"You're not g---" Sherlock attempts to remind the man but John holds up a hand.

"You're. My. Person. That's the best explanation I can give you at this point. The rest we can figure out together, yeah?" John suggests.

Sherlock nods. He doesn't even dare to imagine anything further than a kiss at this point. He has no experience of any kind of such things, and John doesn't have any experience of doing this with a man and it's all going to be hellishly awkward and Mary will probably laugh at them, but strangely enough it somehow warms Sherlock's heart that Mary might be there. They're all broken and they're all complicated and they're all pieces that don't exactly fit, all three of them. It's like John said - backup is good.

There is a lot here that needs to be analyzed. It will be Sherlock's greatest and most complex deduction, to learn more about the heart of John Watson and maybe learn something about his own in the process as well.

His train of thought is interrupted by John kissing him. It takes a moment for his brain to catch up with his lips. This time John is not careful or confused, but determined in the way in which only John Watson knows how to be determined.

When they run out of breath, John doesn't let go of where his palms have snaked up to Sherlock's biceps. "I'm not losing you for a third time. I'm yours, if you'll have me," John tells him.

Sherlock lays his palms gently on John's cheeks and their eyes lock.

Sherlock tries to understand how the universe could have given him such a man.

John gently lays his own palm on top of his. Sherlock lets his hands falls and as he exhales he feels like he's breathing properly for the first time in a long while.

"Why do we---" Sherlock starts to enquire, trying to find the right words, but words are failing him like the rest of his sensibilities but he doesn't care, it's not important. Only John is important. John and Mary and Benjamin.

John and Sherlock and Mary and Benjamin.

"Why did we never say these things, John? You know I can't operate if I don't have all the data."

John chuckles. " I told you once already, this is hard for me, this sort of thing. And you're not exactly Mr Heart-Worn-On-Sleeve either."

"Mary told me I should give you a chance to explain. I didn't."

"I don't blame you. I will tell you about James one day - there aren't as many similarities between you and him as you think, but it was the idea that I was letting you down like I let him down that was the worst part. I wanted to be there for you and I wanted to be there for the family, you know?"

Sherlock nods. He can see that this is difficult for John. "John, I'm sorry. No, hear me out. I'm sorry for the way in which I chose to voice my issues. I am not sorry for having these issues because I can't exactly wil them away, but the manner in which I came to your home and confronted you was --- A bit not good," he formulates and John seems to catch his drift.

"What you said made me reaize I couldn't postpone making certain decisions anymore. I realized that for this to work I needed to start connecting dots instead of dividing my life between you and the rest. Mary actually told me in some rather colourful terms that we're both idiots and that I needed to tell you certain things. Out loud."

John looks expectant so Sherlock deduces that he's expecting some sort of a reply.

Sherlock proceeds to pulls his plane ticket out of his coat pocket, rips it triumphantly in half and drops it into the bin at the end of the row of seats.

John regards Sherlock's bag with very John-like amusement. "Where were you even going to go?"

"Marrakech."

John raises his brows. "Why? What's in Marrakech?"

Sherlock doesn't really want to answer but he does, anyway. He feels drunk on hope and the sight of John, and everything is so confusing that he really can't tell up from down and he somehow knows that this is not the time to lie.

"Irene," Sherlock says. He prepares for John's anger. John hates Irene.

Sherlock's jaw drops when John just laughs instead and there's not even a hint of disdain in it. "No," John then says, still grinning.

"No?" Sherlock repeats, confused and slightly alarmed.

"No," John says, pats him on the bicep and Sherlock suddenly realizes how utterly ridiculous this whole thing is. He didn't want to go to Irene. Compared to John Irene is nothing. Compared to Mary Irene is nothing. Just a phantom on the losing side.

John's arms abruptly circle Sherlock again in a bear hug, squeezing his arms against his sides briefly. John then lets go, grabs Sherlock's bag and begin a brisk walk towards the exits. After a few steps he glances behind him and skids to a halt. "Aren't you coming?"

Sherlock is shaken out of his reverie and hurries after John. Even if this all ends up destroying them, Sherlock realizes he doesn't care because he's willing to bet on the side of their success. They've survived so much already.

Trying to escape to the other side of the universe would not have erase memories of this life. It would never have fixed anything. There are things not even Sherlock can delete.

Only John can fix things. John likes fixing things.

Maybe at some point John will realize that this is as far as his feelings go and that physically he will never reach the depth of desire that has nearly driven Sherlock mad. Maybe there's never going to be more than this - borderline chaste kisses, promises of companionship - but at least there's going to be John.

They have to at least try. Everything else he can live without, but not this man.

They walk out of the terminal.

Mary is waiting for them there, Benjamin in her arms. Sherlock hesitates slightly when he spots them, but John smiles, grabs his hand and takes them all home to Baker Street.

 

_**The End** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some readers have voiced their dissatisfaction with the ending. I completely understand and respect that. It's been fascinating to read different interpretations of it! Still, to avoid addressing certain things repeatedly, I decided to add this note. 
> 
> First of all, I completely agree that this strange and fragile agreement between John, Mary and Sherlock might be doomed from the start. I agree that John is rather selfish here, but he might also be trying to do the honourable thing, considering that there's a kid in the picture. As I see it, unless Mary or the child meets a tragic end, John's sense of responsibility might not permit him to abandon his new family even if he finally came to his senses about the fact that for him, there could never be anyone else than Sherlock. There are no easy or good options here, and that is the dilemma Sherlock is acutely aware of. The story begins when he realizes that the way in which he has gracefully stepped aside to allow John the life he built while Sherlock was supposedly dead, is destroying the very core of him.
> 
> By some definitions, this would be a polyamorous relationship, but then again Mary is not in love with Sherlock. Sherlock may not harbour feelings any fonder than tolerance towards Mary. Sherlock is not a charitable person and Mary might not agree to pay for her mistakes in this manner forever. Either or them might decide it's unbearable and leave. Sherlock would have been John's first choice, and if he'd acted upon that earlier Mary would not have joined this mess at all.
> 
> As I see it, Sherlock decides that a deeply unsatisfying and probably jealousy-inducing compromise is better than losing John altogether. This is not a happy ending. 
> 
> That being said, I love discussing the story, my dramatic choices and the potential aftermath in the comments section. So do drop in, hoot, ponder, yell, rejoice, question, commiserate and challenge me freely! If you enjoyed this I'm very very very glad, if you didn't then it's all fine, too :)
> 
> \-------------------------------
> 
> The story title is the opening line of the Tori Amos song "I Can't See New York".  
> Chapter 2: lyrics quote from "Smother" by Daughter  
> Chapter 3: lyrics quote from "Begin The End" by Placebo  
> Chapter 5: lyrics quote from "Lovers Or Liars" by Lauren Aquilina


End file.
